


Headless

by Lovejoy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, Chocolate Box Treat, Decapitation, F/M, Horror, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Mission Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:01:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22541410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovejoy/pseuds/Lovejoy
Summary: Kakashi and Sakura investigate a string of murders in Southern Fire Country.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 11
Kudos: 146
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Headless

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crunchysunrises](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crunchysunrises/gifts).



> I started writing this gift for you more than a year ago (I know), but I didn’t quite manage to finish it in time for reveals. Naturally, I'm jumping on your Chocolate Box prompts as an excuse to finish it for you now as a treat. I hope you enjoy, and happy (spooky) Valentine's Day!

The journey to the south passed quickly, in two days of travel and one night of sleep.

Fire Country truly earned its name when the leaves began to turn: everything was a wash of red and gold and orange, breathtaking when the sun was low in the sky, slanting golden light through boughs heavy with yellow leaves. They fell in a delicate curtain as Sakura ran, feet tapping gently on thickly knotted branches.

They arrived in the small village of Shimosen at sundown on the second day. The village was located in Minamiki Province and nestled snugly at the base of the Three Grandfathers, a short range of mountains that separated Fire Country from Wave. It was enclosed by a thick, sprawling forest, the Kuromori, one of Fire’s largest and densest—which made moving unseen easy.

Just before they entered the village, Sakura transformed her hair into a dull strawberry blonde, and her eyes into warm amber, and her kunoichi clothes into a dusty red kosode. Kakashi did the same: his hitai-ate turned into an eyepatch, his mask into a scarf, and his flak jacket into a ratty old happi coat. A wide straw hat hid his distinctive white hair from view.

Even if they were Konoha shinobi on a mission well within Fire Country borders, it was never wise to advertise where you stayed for the night—especially with a murderer, and possibly a missing-nin, on the loose. Both of their natural appearances were distinctive enough to tip off any ninja with a bingo book as to who they were.

“Nice hat,” Sakura said, not especially trying to hide her smile.

“Thank you,” Kakashi said, assuming a dignified tone. “I think it really brings out my eye.”

The innkeeper of the village’s only ryokan, a tiny old kimono-clad woman with flyaway gray hair, greeted them at the door. She eyed them suspiciously until Sakura said, “If it's not too much trouble, my husband and I are looking for a quiet place to spend the night. Do you have any rooms available?” Then the woman’s eyes softened and sparkled knowingly, and she said, “Of course, of course! Right this way.”

As the innkeeper was leading them to their room, she chatted to them in strong Southern Fire Country dialect, saying, “We don't get many young married couples coming through here. Most people your age go to Aosaki, by the border—have you been?—ah, it’s just as well. My sister moved there with her husband years and years ago; it’s quite the destination for couples and newlyweds, but it’s not nearly as beautiful. I’ve always said so. We’re a bit hidden away here, but we have much better views—don't you think so? Aren’t the mountains gorgeous this time of year?”

Sakura nodded and agreed where appropriate, until the innkeeper stopped in front of a pair of fusuma doors decorated with trees and cranes, and then turned back to them, mouth pursed.

“There’s just one more thing—if you’ve got business in the village, make sure you’re back indoors by nightfall,” she said. “There’s a curfew in effect. You’ll be arrested if you’re caught out after dark. We’ve had some trouble in these parts lately.”

Sakura feigned surprise. “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

The old lady thinned her lips, as if hesitant to impart information that might lose her paying customers. “There’s been murders,” she admitted, looking grim. “Girls turning up without their heads. It’s terrible, just terrible. You’d better keep an eye on your wife, young man,” she said, pointedly looking at Kakashi. “Or she’ll get snatched up just like the others.”

Sakura almost snorted. _Young man._ Granted, it was difficult to tell Kakashi’s age—he looked the same as he did when Sakura was eleven, although that could probably be attributed to the mask—but by shinobi standards, he was a death-dodging old fart.

This amused her far more than the implication that she couldn’t take care of herself. Still, it wasn’t like she was _advertising_ the fact that she was a kunoichi. All the innkeeper knew was that Sakura fit the profile.

Which could come in handy.

“I’ll do my best,” Kakashi assured her, just barely managing to sound sincere. Sakura could tell he wanted to laugh.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be very careful,” Sakura said. She bowed and thanked her graciously, and the innkeeper tottered off with assurances that if they required anything, they need only ask.

Kakashi was already discarding his Henge. He nicked his thumb with a kunai, fished out a scroll, and dragged the bleeding cut across the contract seal. Pakkun appeared in a puff of chakra smoke, scratching his ear with his hind leg.

“Oh,” he said, looking up at Sakura. “Hey, Sakura-chan.”

His watery gaze seemed expectant. She knelt to scratch behind his ears, and his droopy eyes closed in momentary bliss. Kakashi pointedly cleared his throat.

“Pakkun, go with Sakura,” he said. To Sakura, he added, “Any disturbances, tell Pakkun to come find me, and I’ll send another hound your way if I get in trouble. I'm going to scout to the east. You cover the west. Meet back at that shrine near the village gates in an hour if nothing turns up.”

They split off just beyond the shrine in question and took to the west, heading toward the section of forest where three of the seven bodies were reported to have been found.

After a few minutes, Pakkun’s wrinkled little face seemed to wrinkle even further, and he said, “Huh. Smells like death.”

Sakura looked at him sharply. “What? Where?”

“Everywhere,” he said, nose tipped up into the air. “It’s hard to pin down, actually. I don't know what's dying. I just know _that_ it's dying, and it’s all around us.”

“Well, it’s autumn,” she said slowly, not believing it herself. “All that decaying vegetation…”

Pakkun made an unimpressed noise. “That’s not it. But it’s not exactly rotting flesh, either. It’s just… death.”

Sakura frowned, unsettled. “We’ll keep going. Let me know if the scent gets stronger in any direction.”

They pushed deeper into the forest, but nothing changed until they were almost at the base of the Second Grandfather, about a mile out from the village.

A sense of foreboding crept up her spine so strong it felt like cold fingers walking along her vertebrae. Her skin erupted in gooseflesh, and she swallowed against a sudden sting of bile. That was killing intent if she’d ever felt it. The chakra signature was strange, though—thick, miasmic, like a strong foul odor. Whoever it belonged to, they weren't even trying to hide it.

“Sakura,” Pakkun warned.

“Get Kakashi,” she said. Pakkun gave a nod and leapt back the way they came.

She crept forward, skin crawling. It was like nothing she’d ever felt before—not even from Gaara, and his chakra signature had felt like wading through a pool of blood. This… this was like walking forward into a fog of poison, like she was breathing something hideous and dark into herself. But just as it became almost too much to bear, there was a sudden break in the silence: a high, sharp scream that was abruptly cut short.

Sakura took off running.

By the time she got to the clearing, it was too late. The oppressive chakra signature had gone, and there was a body lying face-down on the forest floor, missing its head.

Shit. _Shit._

She knelt and rolled the body over. It was wearing a pin that indicated she’d been a part of the volunteer night watch. Blood was still pumping out of the neck stump, a glistening dark stain against the grass. Sakura pushed down a wave of regret and studied the neck wound.

As callous as it was, a fresh body made her job that much easier: civilian autopsy reports often missed or dismissed ninjutsu-specific medical details. She did a cursory diagnostic, sending her chakra through the rapidly cooling corpse in waves. The spine was missing, all of it, just like the others. She checked around the neck. The cut was not cleanly made; its edges were ragged and uneven, still raw.

Sakura was used to inspecting horrific wounds, but in her line of work, the patient was usually still alive, and there was still a chance—no matter how small—to fix the damage. If the body still had its head attached, she might have been able to save it.

She heard Kakashi and Pakkun touch down behind her.

“I was too late,” she said, voice tight.

“You didn’t see anything?”

“No, but I felt it.” She wasn’t sure how to explain the feeling. “It was like—someone was breathing down my neck. Or right in my face, and I just couldn’t see them.” She shuddered, feeling slightly ill. Kakashi looked grim.

“A signature that strong…”

Usually meant a monstrous amount of chakra. Not good.

Pakkun sniffed the neck stump to get the scent. “I’ll check around for the head,” he said, and scampered off.

Kakashi knelt beside her. Sakura confirmed what they both already knew: “It's consistent with the report. The spinal column was pulled out with the head, still attached.”

It hadn't been much of a report to begin with: a hastily scribbled request in tiny chicken scratch characters on a very small scroll sent by messenger hawk to Konoha. It hadn't been signed, but Sakura suspected whoever had been inspecting the bodies postmortem had been the one to write it.

_Shimosen, Minamiki Province, Fire Country. 6th dead body this month. All female, aged early to late 20s. Missing heads and spines, unrecovered. Bodies found in forest around village. Don't know how it could've been done. Keeps happening. Seeking assistance from Konoha. Please help before more people die._

_Missing heads and spines._ That had been what had caught Sakura’s attention: decapitation wasn't an atypical method of execution, but the spines? It had seemed so ludicrous then and even more ludicrous now that she could see exactly what had been done.

It made no sense. Beheading someone was easy, but keeping the entire spine intact… it would take time and skill to perform, even for the most talented medic. You’d have to cut around the entire spinal column, painstakingly disconnect tissues and fibers and muscles and nerves from the spinal cord, ligaments from the vertebrae… you couldn't just _rip_ it out of a human body like a skewer from a piece of meat—but that was exactly what appeared to have happened.

That, and the window of time between hearing the scream and finding the body had been mere seconds, not _nearly_ long enough to perform such a complex technique.

She pushed her chakra deeper, checking for any other irregularities, but there were none she could find: this girl had been in very good health before she died.

“If this is medical ninjutsu, it’s insanely advanced,” she said. “It requires surgical precision that’s pretty much impossible to achieve in such a small amount of time.” It was more likely they were looking at a bloodline limit, which might explain how it could have been performed so quickly, but she’d never heard of a bloodline limit whose effects were so oddly and gruesomely specific. She told Kakashi as much, and he nodded, a furrow appearing between his right eyebrow and the slant of his hitai-ate.

Pakkun returned. “No sign of the head,” he said. “But there’s definitely a scent trail that goes deeper into the forest. You smell it too, right, Kakashi?”

“Yeah.” He stood. “There were two bodies here. Now there’s just one.”

Sakura’s stomach flipped. She got to her feet. “Show me.”

They found the second body about a hundred meters from the first, slumped against the trunk of a gnarled tree.

This victim was also female, but she wasn’t wearing a night watch pin. Sakura checked the neck. There was obvious and violent post-death trauma to the wound—almost like someone had tried to sheathe a knife down the hole where the spine had been.

The report hadn’t mentioned anything like that.

Kakashi knelt to check the undersides of the woman’s shoes, and then double-checked the prints leading to her body. “There’s only one set of footprints leading here, and they belong to her.”

Strange. Sakura frowned and stood, glancing up at the branches above. None of this was making any sense. “A puppeteer? He could have controlled her from the trees to minimize his trail.” But if the killer was looking for bodies to make puppets out of, why get rid of the heads and spines? Why decapitate them so messily? And if collecting the heads and spines was his goal… why puppet the body away?

“He would have left a scent,” Pakkun said firmly. “A puppeteer’s chakra strings leave traces of chakra on whatever they’re controlling. I would’ve smelled them. But this,” he indicated the body with his nose, “this just smells like death.”

“The same scent you've been smelling everywhere?” Sakura said.

“Yeah. Plus the usual corpse smell, but yeah, I think so.”

“Well, there’s no way a headless corpse would just get up and walk away,” said Kakashi mildly. Too mildly, Sakura thought, to be anything but genuine confusion. “You’re sure there’s nothing else?”

“Sorry, boss,” Pakkun said. “The trail ends here.”

*

They made another circuit of the entire village, pressing deeper into the surrounding forest, but found nothing, and so returned the bodies to the local authorities. After slipping quietly back to the ryokan, Sakura made an immediate beeline toward the onsen: she felt like she was covered in a layer of grime that had nothing to do with sweat or dirt, as if a film of heavy black oil clung to every plane and crevice of her body.

The outdoor springs were closed now that night had fallen, but the indoor baths were still open. Large folding screens painted with hawks and mountains had been placed across the wide bank of windows for privacy. Sakura showered quickly, vigorously scrubbing herself down, and then stepped gratefully into the hot water.

She soaked for a good hour, trying to forget that oppressive, cloying chakra. When she felt herself beginning to drift, she reluctantly pulled herself out of the water and went to shrug on the ryokan’s complimentary yukata.

Kakashi was back in their room, stripped down to his black vest and mask, yukata untouched. His hair was damp, and he smelled clean and fresh and slightly electrified, like the air before a thunderstorm. He’d placed trapped tags in all four corners of the room and under the window, and was reclining on the unrolled futon, reading _Icha Icha Tactics._ Pakkun was nowhere to be found.

Sakura snorted, closing the fusuma doors behind her. “Don’t you ever get tired of reading the same books over and over?”

Kakashi leveled her with a lazy, innocent gaze. “If you have a favorite food, do you eat it just once?”

“That’s food,” Sakura said, sitting beside him. “This is porn.”

“Porn nourishes me,” Kakashi said, very seriously.

Sakura rolled her eyes, crawled under the duvet, and turned away from him, toward the window. “Goodnight, Pervert-sensei. Enjoy your meal.”

“Goodnight, Sakura-chan. I’ll eat well.”

*

At first, she felt warm. There was a presence at her back that she immediately identified as Kakashi, his chakra buzzing at a low, steady pulse—slightly electric as always, as comforting and familiar as an old nightlight. Then she felt the tiny hairs on her arms stand on end. Her gut slowly tightened, like a clenching fist. Something was wrong.

She opened her eyes, peering into the darkness. She saw no movement. The dimness resolved itself into a portrait on the wall and a shaft of moonlight that seemed to be thrown across it.

She looked at it for a long moment, trying to make that make sense: she hadn’t remembered a portrait.

Then it moved.

She shot bolt upright with a strangled gasp, but whatever had been looking in at them was already gone.

Someone grabbed her arm. Sakura whipped around, but it was just Kakashi: he’d woken with her.

“Sakura,” he said, gravel-voiced. “What’s wrong?”

“There was—someone at the window,” she hissed, heart beating wildly in her chest. Her skin crawled.

“You’re sure? Did you see what they looked like?”

“Pale,” she said. “Dark hair, I think. Or that could have been the window frame. I was half-asleep.” She buried her fear response, compressing it to a point, and evened her breathing. She was in control.

Kakashi’s hand left her. He was on his feet. “I’ll take a look outside. You check on the guests.”

She nodded and rose from the futon, shaking off the goosebumps. She summoned a small amount of chakra to her palm, a tiny shining mote, and the soft pale mint glow lit up the room. Kakashi’s eyes flickered from her abdomen up to her face, and then he was gone out the window.

She looked down at herself and flushed, realizing her yukata was hanging wide open, having loosened in the night. Thankfully, it hadn’t exposed anything too dire; just a thin strip of bared skin from her chest to her waist. She quickly re-crossed the panels back over each other and secured them with the crumpled obi. Then she slid the fusuma back and stepped barefoot onto the cool dark wood.

She made a loop of the entire ryokan, treading quickly but silently. Everything was quiet, save for the occasional sleepy mumble or muffled snore. She didn’t feel the oppressive chakra signature; not even the darkness seemed unwelcoming. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to track.

She returned to the room and doused her chakra lamp, but her hackles were still raised, and she stared hard at the round window, daring the figure to reappear. After several long minutes of waiting, a shadow loomed outside, and Sakura’s hand was reflexively on her kunai before she saw that it was only Kakashi.

“Anything?” she said tightly.

“There’s nothing.” He dropped back into the room and shut the window firmly, deftly avoiding the trapped tag. “None of the night watch saw anything either. Not that I expected them to.”

“How did he know we were here? Did he track us back?”

“It’s possible,” Kakashi hedged. “But I’m not sure how.” They’d endeavored to leave no trace, keeping off the ground and in the trees, and had been fully suppressing their own chakra signatures. That wouldn’t matter if their stalker had a bloodline limit that could see chakra, like the Sharingan or Byakugan, or had a nose like an Inuzuka—but that seemed even more improbable.

Her mouth tightened. “We should move. If he knows where we are—”

Kakashi shook his head. “If he was going to come inside, he would have done it already. He’s just trying to scare us.”

“Yeah, well, mission accomplished,” she said, and let out a long, shaky breath. So much for sleep. She _hated_ the feeling of being watched.

And something was tugging at the back of her mind… wouldn't a ninja skilled enough to track them unnoticed be skilled enough to avoid setting off traps? He had already suppressed his putrid chakra to completely unidentifiable levels, so why didn’t he come in when he’d had the drop on them? Missing-nin weren’t in the habit of letting their enemies survive. If it were her, Sakura certainly wouldn’t have let him live.

Maybe he was just sadistic. Or…

“I've been thinking,” Sakura said slowly. “Why kill outside of the village?”

“Hm?” Kakashi said, but he was looking at her like he’d already had the same thought.

“If he can get into the village without anyone noticing, why have all of the bodies been found out in the woods? He could just as easily kill them here.”

“Well, for some ninja, part of the thrill is luring the target out,” Kakashi said. “Some predators are hunters; others are ambushers. Maybe he likes it better when they come to him, for whatever reason. I’ve known several missing-nin who preferred to use that method.”

“Were they genjutsu-users?”

Kakashi blinked. “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

“Of course,” Sakura muttered. Something had to _make_ these women want to leave the village, despite the curfew, despite the danger, and a strong enough genjutsu could hypnotize anyone into doing something stupid.

She thought of the corpse that had, for lack of any other explanation, walked away by itself, and frowned, unsettled.

They remained awake until dawn broke, the rising sun casting a wash of diffused red-orange light through the shoji panels. Sakura dressed quickly; Kakashi politely turned his back, and when she was done, she handed him his flak jacket and strapped her kunai holster back onto her thigh.

All indications pointed to the killer being inactive during the day. Still, they were extra careful combing the forest together: Kakashi looking for prints that might not have been visible in the dark, Sakura sensing for that horrible, putrid chakra. But there was nothing, Kakashi told her, save that ever-present smell of death.

Back in the village, they agreed to split up and question the locals. The authorities had already looked into the families of the victims, as one night watchman told her, but none of them exhibited any notable chakra capabilities whatsoever. Sakura went around to food stall owners—surprisingly reliable sources of information—and asked if they’d seen any suspicious activity out on the streets. Beyond the occasional pickpocket, they said, they hadn’t noticed anything of interest.

She met back up with Kakashi at the village outskirts. The sun was beginning its descent in the clear, cloudless sky, and lanterns were beginning to flicker on. The curfew would soon be in effect, and the night watch out in droves to enforce it.

Kakashi summoned his entire pack of ninken, unleashing the seal against the earth in a plume of smoke.

“I want you guarding all entrances and exits to the village,” he told them. “Nobody goes in or out without me or Sakura knowing about it.”

“Yes, boss,” the pack chorused, and sprang off to station themselves at strategic points around the village.

“Now,” he said brightly, turning his eye back on her. “Who wants to be bait?”

*

They played rock-paper-scissors for it. Kakashi lost.

Below her on the forest floor, he had transformed himself into a beautiful silver-haired young woman, wandering and stumbling and tripping exactly like a lost, drunken villager would. In the trees, Sakura kept one eye on him, and the other on her immediate surroundings, scanning for any disturbances.

After about an hour, she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye.

It was some ways off—maybe a long jump away, in a little clearing hidden by thick, gnarled tree trunks, but not far enough that Kakashi wouldn’t hear her if she needed backup. Her heart pounded in her throat. She crept closer, keeping silent, and saw that there was a civilian woman stumbling through the trees at the same drunken, halting pace.

Warily, Sakura focused in, feeling for deception, or for that slick, greasy chakra, but all she could sense was the same low-level hum of nastiness that permeated the whole area. It wasn’t a genjutsu, either—she sent a quick pulse of disruptive chakra to her senses and nothing happened. There really _was_ a woman out late at night, stupidly alone.

 _Shit._ How did she get out? There was no way the pack hadn’t noticed her leave—she must have wandered away before night even fell. Maybe _that_ was how he was doing it; hypnotizing his victims during the day while they were out running errands, and then collecting them at night. Sakura had to get this woman back to the village before she got herself killed.

She dropped warily from the trees several behind her, kunai in hand, just in case. The killer would be coming soon for his prize, and she needed to snap this poor woman out of it before he could get the drop on them. Quietly, she said, “Excuse me, miss? You shouldn’t be out here.”

The woman turned.

It was like being dunked headfirst into a lake of tar. Sakura’s throat gummed up. Her veins turned to ice. The miasma of killing intent rose and oozed over her like a wall of sludge, inescapable.

She stared in horror, but couldn’t scream.

The woman’s mouth split and smeared into an awful, jagged smile. Her eyes were black and dead, and Sakura knew this was the same face she’d seen in the window, and that it wasn’t even _close_ to human.

“Shouldn’t be out here,” it mimicked, in a scraping, yowling voice.

Sakura was frozen to the spot. Her heart felt it was going to break out of her ribs, or crawl up her throat to die on her tongue. She couldn’t breathe. A tickle at her upper lip told her that her nose had begun to bleed. Involuntary tears pricked at her eyes. _Move!_ she screamed at herself, but her muscles were locked in place, bound by unnatural, gripping fear. That horrible sour chakra clouded around her in a veil of acrid smoke, squeezing her bones, soaking into her skin like oil. The woman-thing listed toward her, blood-red mouth screaming wider—

Suddenly there was a deafening chatter of birds, and a flash of jagged blue light, and Kakashi’s Raikiri-encased hand had punched a hole right through the thing’s chest.

But it didn’t stumble. It didn’t die. It didn’t even even bleed. It jerked its head around to look at Kakashi, mouth still too-wide, a dark, festering pit of death and decay, and emitted a mocking, chittering crackle—like the mutated chirping of a thousand birds.

Kakashi turned his Sharingan on her, glassy and dark, and shouted, _“Run!”_

The red pinwheel whirled. Her muscles unlocked. Air rushed back into her lungs, as sharp and cold as needles. She didn’t question him. She knew instinctively that there was no way they’d beat this thing if they stayed and fought—it would be stupid to try; they'd just die faster.

It took an incredible effort of will to get herself to move, but she did. Thighs trembling, lungs aching, she tried to bring her hands together to weave seals for the Body Flicker technique, but stopped—Kakashi wasn’t retreating. He was still locked in place, arm encased in seared flesh. Time seemed to slow. The woman’s mouth stretched toward him.

_No._

With a gasp of pain, needles skewering every muscle, she fisted a hand in Kakashi’s jacket and _threw_ him back, as hard as she could, away from the not-woman, and before it could refocus its attention on her, she drove her fist deep into the forest floor between them.

The ground burst wide open. Sakura leapt back with the explosion of rubble, sending up a massive wall of earth and stone and creaking, falling trees. Then she turned, joined Kakashi—pale, sweating, but alive—and ran.

They sprinted at double-speed high up through the branches, away from the fog of evil. Sakura was sure she’d never run as fast in her life. Her blood was pounding in her ears, her heart still racing with horrible, foreign fear, but ebbing now: the cold snap of air dried the tears on her cheeks, and she dashed the salty tracks away with the heel of her trembling palm. She’d never felt so afraid. It had been painful, all-encompassing, like drowning. Whatever that thing was, it used fear as a weapon, and wielded it as precisely as a scalpel.

The forest was growing darker around them. They’d been running for a long time. Too long.

Kakashi held up a fist, and they alighted upon the branches of a tall, wide-trunked tree. They climbed quickly up through the foliage, careful not to shake the leaves free, and put their heads above the canopy.

An ocean of red-orange leaves spread out before them, unending. Though Shimosen was nestled at the base of the Third Grandfather, there were no mountains in the distance, no change in terrain: just the tops of turning trees, dyed blood-black in the light of the moon, which was hanging like a rusted dinner plate in the middle of the abyssal night sky. No stars winked at them. No clouds drifted by.

“Well,” Kakashi said impassively. His voice fell flat on the dead air. “That’s not good.”

Sakura brought her hands together, gathering a small burst of chakra. “Kai!” she snapped, but nothing happened.

“It’s not genjutsu,” Kakashi said, confirming her suspicions. The Sharingan was spinning wildly. “Not the kind we know, anyway. Something’s changed. The forest is different. Whatever that thing was, it's trying to trap us here.”

Well, there was the answer as to how it caught its victims: it didn’t have control in the village, but out here, it had perfect control.

Sakura shook her head. “That’s—to do that, it would have to—”

It would have had to completely saturate this forest with its chakra, but that seemed less ridiculous the more she thought about it: it had more than enough chakra to spare, and it had been doing that for who _knew_ how long. “It owns this place,” she whispered. “That’s what you and Pakkun have been smelling. The death—its chakra.”

“Exactly. It can do whatever it wants here, and it wants us to stay.” Kakashi looked at her, eyes curving into crescents. “Well, until it finds us. Then it'll probably want to eat our heads.”

She saw that involuntary tears had also marked his face, soaking into his mask. Reflexively, she reached out to wipe them away, but they had already dried: her fingers met tight, wind-bitten skin.

She had never seen him cry before. She didn’t like it.

He let her fingers drift across his roughened cheeks, and then said, “Your nose.”

She pulled her hand back and touched her upper lip, crusted with blood. “It’s fine,” she said, thumbing the worst of it away. “Sensory overload, I think. That killing intent… I've never felt anything like it.”

She looked down at his hand, mostly clean, streaked with old blood and bits of bone.

“It wasn’t alive,” she said. He'd skewered a corpse.

“No,” he agreed. “It wasn’t.”

They ducked back beneath the canopy and found a wide, sturdy branch to camp on. All around them, the forest was still, and dark, and endless.

“So how do we get out of here?” she said, far more calmly than she felt. She _felt_ like digging a hole in the earth and hiding there until the sun rose, but for all she knew, the sun might never rise again.

“We get rid of it.” Kakashi tilted his hitai-ate back over his Sharingan. “It’s a being of pure chakra, pure spiritual energy, pure Yin. So, flinging more chakra at it won’t work, and we can’t fight it the usual way; our attacks won't do anything. We need to tie it to something physical. And that means—”

“A seal,” Sakura finished. She’d figured as much.

“Exactly. Did Tsunade teach you the Four Symbols seal, by any chance?”

Despite the wealth of seals she now knew, and the one she had placed upon her own body, that one was not among them. “In theory,” she hazarded, gritting her teeth. She’d studied the Four Symbols and several other archived fūinjutsu academically, but most of her focus had been put toward mastering and cultivating the Strength of a Hundred seal, since it was important to start early. As a descendant of both the Senju and the Uzumaki, the Four Symbols was a seal Tsunade knew well, but its practical uses for medic-nin were slim. Sakura found herself wishing she’d begged Tsunade to teach it to her anyway, and screw practicality; if— _when_ they got back, she would do just that.

Kakashi closed his visible eye. “Okay. Well, that isn’t ideal, but it could be worse. Luckily, my sensei taught it to me, so I’ll teach it to you. No better time for a crash course, eh?” He rubbed his hands together as if to warm them up. “It takes a very large amount of chakra to pull this off, but between you and me, and especially you, we can do it.”

Sakura was confident she had the reserves. It was a challenge to draw on the stored power of her incomplete Strength of a Hundred seal without releasing it, and doing so would put her back in progress no matter what, but she’d rather spend another year painstakingly re-cultivating the lost chakra than die at the hands of that _thing._ “I’ll do my best.”

“You’re going to have to do better than your best. We’ve got one shot at this.” _Or we’re dead_ , was the unspoken implication.

She nodded firmly, heart in her throat. “I won’t let you down.”

Kakashi’s eye creased in a smile. “I know you won’t.”

He took a blank scroll from flak jacket, and an inkwell and brush from his weapons pouch. He unscrewed the cap, slashed his thumb on the tip of his kunai, and squeezed a few droplets of blood into the ink, then motioned for her to do the same. She made a chakra blade and carefully slit open her own thumb, letting the blood drip freely into the inkwell. Then she sealed the wound, took Kakashi’s hand, and rubbed her newly-healed thumb over his cut to mend it. She knew why he needed her blood: so that the seal would respond to her as it did to him, as if it were her own creation.

He whisked the mixture with the other end of the brush, wiped it on his thigh, and then carefully dipped the bristles in. “Watch closely,” he said, and worked outward, beginning with a painstaking rendition of the center spiral. Each stroke was precise, calculated, and extremely deft—an exact copy, Sakura was sure, of his sensei’s work. She committed it to memory.

“My chakra reserves are going to be severely depleted after this,” he warned. “I won’t be able to step in with another Raikiri if we need it, or Kamui—not that they would work. And this seal will still need to be activated. That’s going to fall to you, Sakura.”

She swallowed, determined, even if her skin crawled with the idea of getting close enough to that thing to touch it. “Understood.”

While the ink was still wet, Kakashi began steadily weaving his chakra into the calligraphy. The air around them felt laden with ozone—his raw chakra’s effect on their surroundings, making the fine hairs on her arms stand on end: so potent and condensed, she half-expected a thunderstorm to roll in and drench them both. It felt like she was breathing lightning, the oxygen crackling sharply at the back of her throat.

It took close to ten minutes to complete the infusion. By the end, beads of sweat were rolling down Kakashi’s nose to catch in the fabric of his mask. Even without checking, she could tell he was pouring a massive amount of energy into the thing, slowly bleeding himself dry in order to completely imbue the seal.

“It’s done,” he grunted, withdrawing his chakra and suppressing it completely. Easier now that he didn’t have much left to suppress, but there was still a lingering charge to the air: a zing in her nostrils and on the back of her tongue.

“You need to activate it with a precise detonation of pure Yin chakra only. If any Yang is present, the seal won’t take effect. But for someone of your chakra control ability, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Then he showed her the hand seals. Naturally, there were four, though one was mostly unfamiliar to her, and almost always used in very rare, highly specialized Yin Release techniques: Dragon, Tiger, Bird, and the last, Tortoise. She mimicked them, carefully keeping chakra away from the coils in her hands; Kakashi checked her form, made her do it five more times with increasing speed, and then nodded in satisfaction.

“Good,” he said, and his eye curved again. “As long as you act as quickly as you learn, you’ll be fine.”

*

With no sense of direction, and no way to track it, they had to wait for it to come to them.

And it would, Sakura was sure: she had seen a desperate hunger in its gaping maw like no other. It wanted them.

She shivered. When she’d been fighting back that sticky residual fear, she hadn’t noticed the temperature slowly dropping around them, but now it was very cold; her breath plumed visibly, and her skin prickled into goosebumps. With the amount of chakra the seal would need, they couldn’t waste any to keep themselves warm, but they couldn’t afford to let themselves get too cold, either; their minds and bodies had to stay sharp. Sakura frowned, setting her jaw.

“Kakashi-sensei, sit against the trunk, please. Open your legs and your flak jacket.”

Kakashi blinked at her. He said, boredly, “My, my, how forward,” but he sat down, spread his thighs over the bulk of the tree branch, and unzipped his flak jacket, revealing the deep black of his regulation pullover.

She turned and sat between his legs, sliding back until her spine aligned with his chest. He drew his knees up around her hips and wrapped his arms around her waist; she held the scroll tightly in one gloved hand, the other resting against her kunai holster.

It was far from a perfect solution, but it would trap enough heat between their bodies while they waited for that thing to reappear so that their reflexes wouldn’t get too dulled by the cold, and that was what mattered.

She felt Kakashi breathe behind her, deep, stable breaths, and found it strangely reassuring—he was always steady, even when he wasn’t. The planes of his chest and abdomen were warm and firm against her shoulder-blades; the simple solid comfort of his arms around her middle made her feel like she was worrying for nothing. They had a plan. They wouldn’t die. Sakura wouldn’t let them.

Then she felt it.

“Kakashi-sensei,” she growled, turning her head and narrowing her eyes at him. “That better not be what I think it is.”

“That depends on what you think it is,” Kakashi said, sounding resigned.

“I think it’s a one-way ticket to your imminent demise.”

He shrugged, but had the good sense to look vaguely ashamed. “Well, you see, I did just have a near-death experience,” he pointed out, in calm, reasonable tones, “and it’s not every day someone saves my life and then sits in my lap—”

 _“I’m not sitting in your lap,”_ she hissed, except that she very nearly was: the hard lump of heat pressing into her lower back seemed to think so, at least, and was clearly greatly enjoying the proximity. “We’re in the middle of a life or death situation!” She smacked his thigh. “You’re supposed to be better than this!”

Kakashi gave her a wounded look. “Surely a medic-nin of your caliber understands that it’s not something a man can control, regardless of rank or situation. Really, I’m completely blameless.”

“That’s not the point,” she growled. Yes, she had known shinobi who had reported becoming aroused when killing, or when placed under a great deal of stress. But this was _Kakashi._ He wasn’t supposed to be susceptible to things like that. He wasn’t supposed to be so obviously male, or human, or subject to the human body’s extraordinarily fickle physiological responses. _And_ he was acting like it was a normal, momentary inconvenience, not the rude indignity it actually was!

Then again, he read smut novels for fun—in _public_ —so how surprising was it, really?

She muttered, “If we didn’t have to conserve chakra, I’d get rid of it for you.”

She felt, rather than heard, Kakashi double-take. “What?”

“I could redirect the blood flow,” she clarified. _And make you impotent_ , she added darkly to herself.

“Ah,” Kakashi said, after a moment, and Sakura rolled her eyes. “Or cut it off completely,” she said sweetly, and felt him cringe behind her.

“No, that’s fine, Sakura-chan…”

They lapsed into tense, uncomfortable silence. Sakura was unaccountably glad she couldn’t see his face—or he, hers.

Long minutes passed, but the line of heat at her lower back was not going away. Even worse, a sympathetic throb had started up between her own thighs, distractingly insistent. She ground her teeth together and fought it off as hard as she could, resisting the urge to stab her own leg—or maybe Kakashi’s leg—with a kunai in order to take her mind off of the unholy fire in her gut. It would fade on its own, eventually. She just had to bear it.

But the more she tried to will it away, the more distracting it became.

It was unbearable. The press of Kakashi’s cock hadn’t abated in the slightest, and neither had the insistent throbbing pulse of her heartbeat in her cunt. The urge to quickly and efficiently take care of herself was nearly overpowering. If she just used the tiniest glow of chakra at the tip of her finger, she could come in seconds, and it would be over, and she’d be able to focus again—but instead, she was slowly soaking her shorts, and her skin felt too hot, and she could feel Kakashi’s erection twitch infuriatingly against her. She clenched down on nothing, fantasizing murkily about that hard heat slipping deep inside her and riding it to release.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Kakashi said, low-voiced and unshakably calm, “but in the interests of mission transparency, I can smell you, and it’s making it extremely difficult to focus.”

 _Shit._ Sakura’s cheeks burned. Kakashi had the nose of a dog—of course he could smell her.

“I’m not the only one who’s making it difficult to focus!” she snapped.

“I know,” he said patiently. “And I apologize. Like I said, it's an involuntary response, and we’re both under a lot of pressure. But right now, I can’t smell anything but you, and that’s a problem.”

She could have died of anger and embarrassment. After a moment, she forced herself to say, stiffly, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” It wasn’t, but there wasn’t any point in acknowledging that. “And I’m sorry to ask this of you,” he continued, sounding somehow both genuinely regretful and distantly, pleasantly polite, “but you need to take care of yourself. Neither of us can afford to be distracted right now.”

She flushed in faint outrage, heartbeat thudding—the _nerve_ of him, sometimes—but he was right. The longer they waited, the more likely it was they’d be found, and she couldn’t focus if her brain was clouded with arousal. If the woman-thing got the drop on them, it wasn’t guaranteed that they’d succeed in sealing it before it killed them.

Still, she balked. “ _Me?_ What about you?”

His tone turned wry. “I’ve had my whole life to get used to smelling myself. You, not so much. And women tend to be much more, ah—” he seemed to be searching for a word that wouldn’t get him pulverized, “—fragrant? When aroused.”

She set her jaw and tried to remain calm. Punching him through a tree would not help.

“Fine,” she whispered. _Fine._ She could do this. It wouldn’t take much. “If we die while I’m—if we die, I’m going to find you in my next life and kill you again.”

“That seems fair.”

It was more than fair; it was a promise. “Don’t look.”

It was a pointless request, given the acuity of his nose, and she wasn’t sure he could even see over the angle of her shoulder—but it was easier to imagine he was doing what she told him to.

Her hand slipped between her legs. At the first brush of her forefinger, her hips jerked, and she gave a sharp sigh at the instant burst of pleasure.

She circled her fingertip over her clit in slow methodical strokes, feeling the fabric dampen quickly. A whip of fire curled up tight in her gut, and she was hyper-aware of Kakashi’s cock against the small of her back, a burning press of heat. Horrifyingly, she was wetter than she could ever remember being before, and the smell of her arousal was thick and obvious, even to her. She could only imagine what it was like for Kakashi—like walking into one of those candle shops back home, maybe: sickeningly pungent and overwhelming, drowning out all else, enough to give anyone a pounding headache.

Then she imagined Kakashi sliding into her. First his fingers, and then his cock.

She tipped her head back onto his shoulder, tensing. His forearms flexed around her waist, and that was enough: her spine arched, and her breath felt like it had been punched right out of her chest. She opened her mouth on a silent moan, stopping it dead in her throat; her clit throbbed as she pet it through a shuddering orgasm, sending bright shocks of pleasure up her spine.

She withdrew her hand and slumped back against Kakashi, who was rigidly still behind her.

Slowly, her senses cleared; the fog of arousal wafted from her mind. She could think again. A cutting breeze cooled the sweat on her brow, and she closed her legs. An involuntary blush began to creep up her neck, but she pushed it back down, freezing all thoughts of embarrassment into a thick layer of rime. It had to be done, so she’d done it. Now it was over.

“Thank you,” Kakashi said shortly. He was still hard. “I appreciate it.”

She took deep, sobering, icy breaths, letting the frigid air creep into her lungs and up her nose, into her brain. “Of course,” she said flatly, and then cold awareness ran down her spine. Any residual arousal she might have felt was frozen into familiar fear. Her fingers tightened on the scroll. Sweat rolled down her neck.

It was horribly silent.

Kakashi’s hand in front of her slowly formed the field signs: _Close. Below._

She nodded. She could feel it.

 _Me distraction_ , Kakashi signed. _You flank._

He’d end up using the last of his chakra, but that was the only way Sakura was going to get the drop on it.

The killing intent rolled over her, unfurling like mist. Her stomach twisted, but she forced herself to her feet, and Kakashi rose behind her, pushing his hitai-ate back up. The Sharingan snapped open.

“Sakura-chan,” came a mocking, unnatural voice. “What’s wrong?”

Sakura’s jaw tightened. She slipped her fingers underneath the scroll’s loose edge, the skin of her arms prickling with shivers. _Breathe,_ she told herself, even as the fear began to worm back into her heart, digging sharp claws in. No room for mistakes. It was do or die.

On Kakashi’s signal, she leapt.

It was like jumping into a vat of oil. She gagged, throat thick with nausea, and felt a new sheen of sweat spring up to stick her hair to her temples. But she wouldn’t let it catch her off-guard—now that she knew how it used fear, now that she wasn’t hiding her own chakra signature, she could temporarily choke the activity in her amygdala, suppressing her threat response—enough, at least, to land a hit. And one hit was all she needed.

Kakashi went for it directly, splitting into two clones, darting lightning-quick across its field of vision to draw its attention away from her. Sakura dropped down behind it, pushing chakra to her hands, scroll unrolled, ready—but as if magnetized to her presence, the woman-thing turned to her again, its stained mouth leering, eyes as black and dead as pits in the earth. The hole Kakashi had put into its chest was still there, gaping, and right beside it, she saw the dull glint of a night watch pin.

Sakura’s stomach dropped. The thing’s neck seemed to grow longer, and longer, until Sakura saw a flash of segmented bone, and realized that it wasn’t a neck at all—the head was simply lifting free of the body it had stolen.

The used corpse dropped bonelessly to the ground, and with a dull pang, Sakura understood: that was why all the victims had been female—it had been trying to find a replacement body. The foul creature had ripped out the spines along with the heads so that it could take their place, sliding in like a key into a lock, a sword into a sheath. The spine dangled like a misshapen tail, stained red; strings of nerves sprouted from the vertebrae like wet hairs, wriggling.

Kakashi’s voice rang out, panicked. “Sakura!”

The head screamed toward her—so much faster than when it had been rooted inside that corpse—

She wouldn’t have time.

One second, she was staring into its advancing maw, and the next, she was on the other side of the clearing, right next to the discarded corpse. It took her a heart-stopping second to realize that she had just been on the other end of a Replacement technique, and that Kakashi was now standing exactly where she’d been.

His mask was in tatters, and his neck—his neck—

His throat was gone. Just. Gone.

Sakura’s stomach rolled over. _“No!”_

She watched his body fall, and then saw the head move, turning jerkily toward her voice: it was coming for her.

Terror flooded her. She felt poisoned by its energy, leaden. Its mouth was smeared with Kakashi’s blood, and as she watched, a long thin tongue—razor sharp, enough to slice through flesh and bone, or to worm down someone's neck and cut out their spine—lolled out to clean it from its cracked, weeping lips, cutting them afresh.

Rage cleared her mind, burnt out her fear. The ghost of her long-silent inner self screamed with unholy vengeance.

She gathered her chakra, delving into her Strength of a Hundred reserves without even really thinking about it, separating Yin from Yang like a knife parting water, weaving the four seals: Dragon, Tiger, Bird, Tortoise. She drew it all to the chakra point in her right palm, building and building until it felt like her hand was on fire, glowing with white-hot energy.

“Come get it, ugly!” she yelled, as the thing rushed her in a streak of black hair and bone. Bracing herself, she threw her palm—and the seal—flat against its monstrous forehead.

A shockwave from the sheer amount of chakra she released into the seal blew down the trees around them. The head stopped dead, unmoving beneath her hand—skin clammy, unreal, eyes flat and wet and hungry.

With a churning roar, the seal activated.

The head shrieked, a bloodcurdling sound that Sakura was never going to forget for the rest of her life: a rending, tearing noise, like a knife screeching against porcelain. The seal did not glow, but instead seemed to suck all light into it: lines and lines of ink crawled out from the paper and wound around the head like long wet strands of hair, wrapping and wrapping, dragging it inward, toward the black hole that the calligraphic spiral had become.

The head turned inside out. The oppressive chakra vanished. The scroll fell to the ground, smoking.

Sakura whirled around.

_Kakashi!_

She ran to him, hands already wreathed in chakra, and skidded on her knees beside his limp body.

His throat—what was left of it—was a mess of glistening red, severed arteries pumping sluggishly over his chest and jaw. His head was barely hanging by a thread, but his spinal column hadn’t been severed, thank all the gods; he must have jerked back just enough to avoid complete decapitation. But everything else was _gone_ , and his face was slack, both eyes glassy. They looked up at her, one grey, one red, and slid slowly shut.

“No,” she whispered. “No. You don’t get to leave me.”

There was no time to think about how bad the injury was, or how impossible surgery would be. It didn’t matter. She forced down bile, froze her emotions into ice, and got to work.

First she repaired the torn arteries and veins, the carotid and jugular, still slowly pumping gouts of blood, and the trachea, so that he could breathe. She reconstructed tissues as if she were molding them from clay, coaxing the new cells to divide and respond to her touch, to heal, to _grow._

Her hands were glossy with his blood. She hadn’t realized she’d been piecing him together by hand, fingertips slipping gently against mangled flesh, tendrils of her chakra working like another set of fingers to repair muscles and nerves and coils and cartilage. She was beginning to feel small sparks as she worked—small, fleeting things, tiny little lightning strikes. Weak, but growing stronger.

Eventually, she had to withdraw to coax the skin to repair, knitting over the once horrific, irreparable wound. Then, suddenly, he was whole again, and he was breathing, and his heart was still beating, even if he was out cold. He was alive.

Of course he was alive. He wasn’t allowed to die.

Relief flooded her. She actually laughed—one low, hiccuping rasp. She lowered her forehead to his chest and just knelt there, feeling his ribcage rise and fall, her hands fisted in his blood-soaked flak jacket.

Fuck, she was exhausted.

It was tempting to just pass out right there, but that wasn’t an option. She still had work to do.

She sat him up, fished around in her weapons pouch, and withdrew a blood-replenishing pill. She pushed it past Kakashi’s unresponsive lips and fed him a bit of water from her canteen, stroking his throat to encourage him to swallow. He did. Good sign. No blockages, no aspiration, and with a quick probe of chakra, she could sense the pill beginning to take effect.

He’d be fine.

With the last of her strength, she picked up the scroll and sealed it inside another, smaller storage scroll, just to be safe, and maneuvered Kakashi up onto her back. She squinted up at the night sky—clear, now, with stars shining down—and headed back to the village. This time, the forest let them go.

A quick genjutsu ensured the innkeeper asked no questions as to why she was hauling around the bloody, unconscious body of her so-called husband; she would only see a happy, slightly drunk couple retiring back to their room for the night. Once inside, Sakura put Kakashi down on top of the futon, arranging his limbs so he wouldn’t stain the tatami mats. She wet their complementary washcloth in the bathroom sink and tiredly wiped the glaze of sticky blood from his face and neck. Her arms felt so heavy.

She made sure the security tags were in place, diverted the rest of her aching, frazzled chakra back into her forehead, and collapsed into deep sleep.

*

She woke up feeling like Tsunade had just punched her six feet underground.

“Ugh,” she groaned. Every atom of her body protested being awake. After a long, muddled moment, where time was meaningless and gravity weighed on her like a ton of bricks, she decided it wasn’t worth it, turned over, and immediately went back to sleep.

When she next awoke, she felt less like a pile of mashed pulp and more like a human being, but just barely. Her arms were wrapped around something solid and alive, and she was very warm, almost too warm, as if she’d slept next to a roaring fire. She smelled old blood, the faintest whiff of wet dog, and a familiar crisp ozone scent.

_Kakashi._

She blinked fully awake, and realized she was curled against Kakashi’s broad back. Her arm was flung possessively over his waist, her face buried against the nape of his neck: whole, pale, unscarred.

She rolled away and sat up. Her face felt hot; she scrubbed the sleep from her eyes.

Kakashi, who must have woken some time ago, turned on his side to face her. His hands moved in strange patterns. She stared groggily at him, nonplussed; it took her a moment to realize the gestures he was making actually meant something, and that she could, in fact, understand them.

 _Good morning, can’t talk,_ he was signing. _Help?_

She blinked again. “Eh?”

Instead of standard shinobi field signs, which communicated isolated tactical concepts, he was using the more elaborate Fire Country Sign Language. It had been a long time since she’d learned it, but it was a mandatory skill for every prospective ninja: you never knew when you'd be deafened on a mission, or relieved of your tongue entirely—or nearly decapitated by a floating head.

“Oh,” she said blearily, scrubbing a hand through her hair. “Your vocal cords.”

She _had_ repaired it all, it was all there—but maybe she’d been so concerned with making sure he would survive, and that all the important parts were linked up and functional, that she might have neglected to completely heal the less necessary parts, like the vocal folds.

“How badly does it hurt?”

_Like a horse kicked me in the throat._

She laughed, and then groaned. Her head throbbed. She pressed the pad of her thumb against the seal in the middle of her forehead and let out a breath. “Well, that’s better than what it was before, at least. But—” and she sent a thread of diagnostic chakra through herself, quickly taking stock of the damage, “—my system is a little fried.” How much chakra had poured out of her last night? How much had the seal needed? How much had she used to save his life? Her coils felt burnt, like they’d run too hot for too long without any coolant, and her usual reserves were just barely full enough to keep her from falling over. The Strength of a Hundred seal hadn’t allowed for true chakra exhaustion, but she was still very low.

“You’re going to have to wait…” She did some quick calculations. Her replenishment rate would increase drastically with some food and a long soak, and what Kakashi needed wasn’t anything that couldn’t wait. “Um, a few hours, maybe more, until I can spare the chakra to heal your voice.”

Kakashi pursed his lips.

His lips.

Oh.

The realization hit her like a ton of bricks. She stared, momentarily thrown. Sakura had seen his unmasked face last night, back when it had been deathly pale and mostly coated in gore, but it was a markedly different experience seeing a man's face streaked in his own blood, fearing for his life, and then seeing him in warm autumn daylight, clean and whole and painfully good-looking.

He didn’t seem to be overly concerned about it, but Sakura could feel herself blushing. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd always known he was an attractive man—his masked profile alone was classically handsome, with a straight nose and a strong jaw—but knowing and seeing were two very different things.

Naruto and Sasuke were going to throw a fit. She hid a triumphant, giddy grin behind her hand.

Kakashi eyed her. _Where’s the scroll?_

Right. She shook herself out of it and patted the pouch. “Safe,” she said, and felt a little ill, remembering.

He nodded. _Good job. I knew you could do it. And._ He touched his throat. _Thank you. That was unpleasant._

“Of course,” she said. “People who leave their teammates to die are worse than trash, remember?”

The corners of his mouth turned up. It was annoyingly attractive. _I wonder who taught you that? He must be extremely intelligent, whoever he is._

“Eh, I don’t know about that,” she said. “He’s always late… and really lazy… and a terrible liar… and used to read smut around kids… and paid more attention to the boys…”

The pleased look morphed into one of resigned, doglike guilt. _I guess I deserve that._

It was amazing how expressive his mouth was. Was that why he kept it covered all the time?

“But even though he can be really dumb,” she said, offering a smile, “he’s a good man. And a good teacher, too.”

_I haven’t been your teacher for years, you know._

“Teammate, then,” she said, and he seemed to accept that, even if they both knew he’d always be her teacher. “Anyway. Let’s get something to eat, I’m starving.” She sniffed herself and grimaced. “And a bath.”

 _You’re letting me get up?_ He narrowed his eye, theatrically suspicious. _Who are you, and what have you done with Sakura-chan?_

*

She transformed the scroll to make it look like a fat, half-melted candle, double-checked the security tags, and went to go soak in the onsen. By the time she felt relaxed enough to even consider thinking about the journey home, it was mid-afternoon, edging into evening, and several other women had come and gone, with a few still bathing nearby.

With considerable effort, she dragged herself out of the water, over to a quick shower, and into her yukata. As expected, Kakashi wasn't in their room—not that they'd established a time limit, necessarily—so she gave him another hour to soak, packed up their things, and double-checked to make sure the scroll was holding (it was). Then she snuck into the men’s onsen.

Thankfully, Kakashi was alone. He was leaning against the side of the baths, head back, arms propped up on the stone lip, _Icha Icha Tactics_ open on his face.

She went over and plucked it off.

He blinked hazily up at her. Though he didn't attempt to communicate, she could read what was visible of his expression well enough: that look of vague (yet interested) consternation was as plain as if he'd spoken it aloud. _You're not supposed to be in here._

She closed his book—well, not before skimming a passage ( _Junko moaned as she plunged her fingers deep into her own soaking depths_ , how… classy)—and distastefully set it on a small stool near the windows. Returning, she placed a quick Henge on herself to appear male, just in case another guest showed up and tried to cause a scene. Then she shrugged out of her yukata and slipped into the water.

This time, Kakashi’s grey eye went wide with vague alarm.

“You want me to heal your throat, don't you?” she said, challengingly. His hooded gaze flicked disconcertedly from her groin to her chest, then back up to her face. Once, she might have been embarrassed to be stared at so openly, especially by a man, and her teacher besides—but it wasn’t even her real body, and Tsunade had burnt any lingering physical insecurities out of her early on. A body was a body.

He gave a slow, miniscule nod.

She sunk into the water in front of him. “It won’t take long. Just relax.”

With another narrow, suspicious look, he tilted his head back, baring his neck.

It was a very nice neck. It was also mostly new. Whatever scars he may have had were now gone, replaced with fresh, unblemished skin, still slightly tender.

Sakura placed both hands on his throat, pressing lightly just beneath his sharp jaw, on either side of his esophagus. She let her chakra trickle warmly through her fingertips, soaking into fresh tissue, and found the problem immediately: during repair, a fair amount of stomach acid had bubbled into the throat and irritated the new cords, one of which had grown back weaker than the other.

She focused on fixing the esophagus first, which was perpetuating the reflux. That fully healed, she strengthened the vocal folds and soothed the swelling, stroking her chakra-laden fingertips back and forth over smooth, pale skin.

Kakashi swallowed; she watched his Adam’s apple bob.

“All done,” she said. “Try saying something.”

“Something.”

“Good job,” she said dryly, and moved to withdraw, but Kakashi gently stopped her.

“Ah, but Sakura,” he said. She could tell he was trying to sound as pathetic as possible, but his single droopy eye wasn’t doing much to persuade her. “I’m still pretty tense. You know. From being nearly decapitated.”

“You’ve been soaking in here for hours, and you’re telling me you’re still tense?”

“Well… you see, it’s difficult to stay relaxed when a former student shows up, strips down, and gets into the bath with you.”

She snorted. “Please. You’re enjoying this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Sakura-kun is very intimidating.”

“Good,” she said sweetly, and watched a droplet of sweat form at Kakashi’s temple.

“Like I said,” he muttered. “Hard to relax.”

“You just want a free massage.”

“This is a serious medical issue,” he said gravely.

She crossed her arms. “What’s in it for me?”

His open eye darkened, and then curved upwards in a smile. “The joy and satisfaction of treating an ailing patient?”

She eyed him.

Well, his spine _had_ almost been forcibly removed from his body, so there might be some merit to his request; better check, just to be certain. She patted his cheek. “You’re lucky I’m feeling generous.”

“Very lucky,” Kakashi agreed. Smart man.

“Turn around.”

He did so, putting his arms up on the lip of the bath and leaning his head against them. Sakura settled behind him, considering the broad, wet expanse of his bare back, streaked here and there with old scars. She was momentarily struck by the trust that showed: it wasn’t often a shinobi voluntarily turned their back to anyone, even if she was his attending physician. There was no hesitation. His life was in her hands. Again.

Not just again, she thought. Always. His life would always be in her hands. She would always be responsible for it.

She had to keep it safe—she would protect it with everything she had. That was how it had been since the very beginning: he was one of her precious people, and she would always fight for him. She held him deep inside the cage of her ribs, right next to her heart. And he’d almost left her.

“Sakura?”

She blinked, realizing she’d allowed her thoughts to still her movements. Her hand was resting flat against the space between his shoulder-blades. There was a scar under her palm shaped like a long crescent moon. She wondered if he held her there, too, underneath his skin—if he kept a piece of her tucked away, like a well-read letter.

“I’m here,” she said, and for a strange, frustrating moment, she felt like crying.

She pushed the urge away, calming the sting behind her eyes, and moved her hand up his spine to his neck. For the second time in as many days, she was glad Kakashi couldn’t see her face.

She began at the base of his skull, pressing her thumbs in deep, then marched them down his neck to his shoulders. She spent a while there kneading out all the knots—Kakashi seemed to made entirely of knot, which wasn’t surprising, considering his dedication to medical care avoidance—while he made low gruff noises that meant he was either in a great deal of pain, or else mind-numbing pleasure. But she was pretty sure it was pain. Most of her patients had mixed feelings about her massages, for some reason.

She moved her hands down his spine and under the water. Kakashi stiffened, but she sent a pulse of soothing chakra through the muscles of his lower back, and he relaxed with a groan.

“You’re upsettingly good at this,” he mumbled into his arms.

“It’s almost like I’m a medical professional,” she said, kneading chakra down his back in buttery waves. Kakashi grunted out something garbled that might’ve been words, at some point.

Then a kernel of daring bloomed within her, and she stopped, swallowing.

“Kakashi-sensei,” she said quietly.

“Hm?”

She took a breath, making certain to telegraph her movements, and went even lower.

Kakashi didn’t say a word, and maintained his silence until her fingers traced the cut of his hips, and the tops of his thighs, and then back up, curling around his sides to glide across the sleek muscles of his abdomen.

“Sakura,” he said, voice hoarse, but didn’t move.

“Tell me to stop,” she whispered. “And I’ll stop. And we don’t mention it ever again.”

He didn’t say a word.

She wrapped a hand around his half-hard cock, and he shuddered.

She laid her cheek against his spine and pressed her chest to his shoulder-blades, letting the Henge melt away. For a moment, she simply held him, content to be close, to feel proof of life in every place they touched. Then she felt his cock twitch. Slowly, tentatively, she squeezed, and then began to stroke, sending sweet pulses of chakra through her palm to his dick. He gave a soft, ragged groan, hips rocking gently into her fist.

She spent some time lightly teasing, and then stroking him intently, with long, slow pulls, aided by the hot water and the gentle vibrations of her chakra. His ribs heaved beneath her chest. “Close,” he grunted, and she let him go. He blew out a long, whistling breath.

“Shit,” he muttered. “You’re so cruel.”

“It’s for your own good,” she assured him, in her most professional tones, running a nail up the side of his cock. “What did you used to tell us? Builds character.”

He hissed in a breath. “ _Ah_ —bullshit.”

“Would you rather I stop?”

“No,” he said immediately. “Whatever you do, do _not_ stop.”

She muffled her laugh against the nape of his neck. “That’s what I thought.”

In a flash, he turned, and his hands were on her waist, and he’d pulled her to straddle his lap. Her laugh turned into an abrupt, cut-off noise, but her hands fell to his shoulders, and she felt his cock press against her lower stomach. Shivers went through her, bright and hot, sparking like static electricity in her gut. One of his hands fell to her thigh, under the water, and the other smoothed up her ribs to one of her breasts.

She bit her lip. His open eye was dark; his hands were large and hot on her wet skin. His thumb passed gently over her right nipple, and she closed her eyes for a moment, letting the feeling wash over her—then gasped at the warm, wet touch of his mouth.

She cradled his head close to her chest, encouraging him as he licked and sucked, clutching at his hair. He hummed as he switched over, and she rocked slowly against the press of his cock, heat curling tight between her legs.

She tugged a little on his hair, and he drew back, hazy-eyed.

He really did have such a nice mouth.

She ducked to kiss him—but off-center, glancing against his mole, then returning, softly, to press against his parted lips. His hands tightened on her waist, and he made a quiet, tortured sound, mouth opening to welcome her tongue.

There was a noise near the showers.

Sakura had re-upped the Henge and was a respectable distance away from Kakashi by the time the group of older men came in to soak. Kakashi looked both dazed and faintly murderous. He’d remained slumped against the side of the onsen, but his open gray eye was burrowing into her, and the impression of his cock was still burning against her palm.

Body humming from his touch, she rose from the water. Droplets spattered into Kakashi’s hair and down his back. She felt his gaze on her every step she took out of the onsen.

Outside, she dropped the transformation and walked slowly back to their room, heart racing. She had barely laid down on the futon when Kakashi came inside, skin still shining wet. He was on top of her before she could blink, spreading her thighs with his hands and inhaling deeply. “Fuck, Sakura,” he croaked, and put his mouth right on her cunt. She squeaked, and then moaned, and cast a half-hearted silencing jutsu over their room.

“You smell so good,” he said, hoarsely. The movement of his lips made her hips arch; she felt his breath like a furnace. “In the forest, it took everything I had—with you right there, touching yourself—”

She pushed a hand through his wild white hair, rocking against his mouth. “I thought about you inside me,” she admitted, blushing hard, and he growled. The sound was disconcertingly wolf-like. A shiver ran through her, from the top of her skull right down to her toes.

“You really shouldn’t say things like that,” he whispered.

“Too late,” she said, breathless, and he bent to press his tongue against her.

In moments, she came against his lips, shaking like a leaf. He moved up her body before she had time to recover, and his cock slid wetly against her cunt, flushed a pretty, dusky red at the tip. She watched him rub against her with lidded, glassy eyes; watched the foreskin slide, watched it get slick and glistening. It was a really nice cock—just as nice as it had felt in her hand.

“Kakashi,” she panted, and grabbed at his hip. “If you don’t get inside me right now—”

“Working on it,” he grunted, stilled, and repositioned himself. She felt the head of his cock nudge against her, pushing, slipping in. He rocked forward. Her head dropped back as he slid home. She relaxed her muscles, easing the way with chakra, and sent a bolt down from her core right to his cock.

“Ah,” he hissed, strained. “Sakura. That’s not very nice.”

She laughed, feeling him pulse inside her. She could probably make him come without either of them ever moving—just by vibrating her chakra through them both, stroking him from the inside—but before she could try it, he was beginning a slow, measured rhythm, and she forgot about trying much of anything at all.

*

“Well?” Tsunade asked briskly, eyeing them up. Her gaze lingered on the long dark stain of blood down the front of Kakashi’s flak jacket.

Sakura gingerly placed the scroll on top of Tsunade’s desk. Then, bracing herself, she explained.

Tsunade stared at her. “A floating head,” she said slowly.

“I think it was the same kind of chakra construct as a tailed beast,” Sakura said. “But it was able to conceal its chakra signature at will and used fear to control its victims.”

“Very similar to a paralysis genjutsu,” Kakashi said. “But with a real physiological effect. So I wouldn’t recommend opening that scroll without a Yamanaka nearby. Even I had trouble with it.”

Leveling a pointed look at Kakashi, Tsunade said, “I expect a detailed report.” She turned to Sakura. “I want to know exactly what this thing did, and what you had to do to suppress it. If there’s one, there’s always another.”

“Yes, shishou.”

She rubbed her temples. “I would’ve expected _Naruto_ to attract this kind of trouble, not you two,” she muttered. Then she glanced up at Kakashi, eyes narrowed, and amended, “Well, maybe you.”

She made an abrupt gesture and a deer-masked ANBU flickered into existence beside her desk. She wrote a quick note, tied it to the scroll, and handed it over. “Take this to Intelligence,” she instructed tersely. “And be careful.”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” the ANBU said, in a bland, inoffensive voice devoid of any particular identifying qualities, and vanished with the scroll in hand.

“As for you two—I want you both to meet with the Analysis Team in one hour.”

Kakashi scratched the side of his nose. “Actually, I agreed to grab a drink with Tenzou at—”

“One hour,” Tsunade snapped. “Sakura, your follow-up mission is make sure he gets there. Keep him on a tight leash.”

Sakura bit her tongue. Kakashi looked suddenly very interested in a potted plant near the window.

“Yes, shishou,” she said, and bowed quickly to hide her smile.

They left the room together.

**Author's Note:**

> The ghost that Kakashi and Sakura fight is based on a [nukekubi.](http://yokai.com/nukekubi)


End file.
